Meditation Three: Agamemnon is just like the rest of them.

I think that Agamemnon is a lot like all the other Greek plays and epics I have read in my years of studying theater and the history of theater. I know that plays like this, Oedipus Rex, etc; are supposed to be very important and influentional to modern day theater, but I find them all rather boring.


I think that most Greek plays sound very similar in plots and in action, even in the way that they are told. Perhaps that is how it was meant to be, especially if they were putting on these plays as part of a festival where the best one won prizes, but I don’t understand why they are exalted so much today. Yes, they are the backbone of today’s theater. That doesn’t make the characters interesting or the plot ingenuous. Someone always gets betrayed, someone goes off to war, one family member kills another for any multitude of reasons – I feel like I am always reading the same play over and over. I understand how important they were to the development of actors – Thespis stepped out of the chorus, then came at least two to three actors for every performance – but I am simply bored by reading Greek plays. They all remind me of one another.